We spent two nights in the marina at Porto Vecchio. We spent the first two days walking the town, mostly in the rain, doing some provisioning (seems like we are always needing fresh produce), shopping for boat parts, and arranging for our French cell phone and wifi hotspot access. The latter took several hours as it appeared the company, Orange, was upgrading their 'boxes' and everyone was coming in to exchange them. We waited patiently for our turn, and then a further wait for a clerk that spoke English, but that's what we need to do when we don't speak the local language. We had our French book with us and Virginia had prepared a few phrases related to our business at hand, but when they suggested just waiting for the english speaking clerk, we were happy to oblige. He was very helpful. Finally today we had a few hours with no rain in the morning so Dennis attacked the two jobs he needed to do: change the oil and service the bilge pump. As sometimes happens.....one job leads to another....he noticed that there was a tear in our ducting that routes fumes from the engine compartment to the outside, and then while fixing that, one of his plastic storage boxes cracked and dumped its contents. While he worked on the ducting and putting things back into place, Virginia walked back up to the department store with measurements in hand and bought a replacement storage container.

With the projects done and all gear again stored away, we ate our lunch, and then took off for this anchorage which is just about 8 miles north of the marina in Porto Vecchio. It is beautiful and calm here and it will make tomorrow's trip shorter.

In the marina we met a couple from Australia that are headed our way, in the short term. They bought a new catamaran in France and are headed back there to have some servicing. We walked the town a bit and visited on their boat one evening. We talked about how we both had older dogs we loved dearly that had recently died and discovered that our dogs and theirs were all weimaraners! Also they already knew about some of our adventures because they had been reading our blog. Small world. They are new to cruising, only out 4 months, but are loving it. We enjoyed their company and hope to see more of them in France. They headed out this morning to go further north; so they are about a day ahead of us. We both plan on crossing from Corsica to Antibes and there is a good weather window for that tomorrow through Sunday.

All's well aboard.